Currently Skimming:
The Spatial Dimension of National Life
The Spatial Dimension of National Life
Pages 87-102
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 87... ...
What are the future implications of forces now at work for the spatial dimension of national life? THE INTERMETROPOLITAN NETWORK As has been indicated, population growth continues to concentrate in metropolitan areas, but at different rates in different parts of the country.
|
From page 88... ...
These cities perform integrative functions for the metropolitan network and are aided by a number of regional metropolitan communities such as San Francisco, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Kansas City, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Dallas, and Denver.
|
From page 89... ...
In other words, it is the land market that reflects the net benefits of urban growth, so efficient growth of the metropolitan network will be seen in aggregate metropolitan land values. Land values, adjusted to reflect market prices, THE SPATIAL DIMENSION OF NATIONAL LIFE 89
|
From page 90... ...
The second, which overlaps the first to some extent, contains metropolitan centers with a high concentration of corporate headquarters and business services -- the regional centers. The final category consists of the six largest clusters, which perform a large number of national and international control functions.
|
From page 91... ...
None of these is a new phenomenon, but the changes they imply are likely to be cumulative. Increasing Scale of Activity Economic development has led over time to very large increases in total national production.
|
From page 92... ...
Application of DDT rapidly affects animal life throughout a wide region. Large land-development firms quickly set the pattern for urban development over broad areas for a long time to come.
|
From page 93... ...
The assumption that urban settlements of the future will be like those of the past may only reflect old habits of confusing physical structures with social realities. Service Industry Growth The proportion of the economy devoted to service activities continues to grow relative to growth in the industrial sector.
|
From page 94... ...
The American Medical Association, the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association, and the United Auto Workers resemble governments within the specialized domains over which they are granted jurisdiction. Today's ethnic communities blend the sentiments of solidarity that distinguish the traditional-type community and the pursuit of shared objectives that identifies the modern community.
|
From page 95... ...
Growth in the service sector of the economy is reflected in the occupational structure and in the rise of knowledge industries as significant influences on the location, density, and composition of urban settlements. Growing interest-group diversity is reflected, on the one hand, in national interest communities with many social-control functions and, on the other hand, in widespread experimentation with new life styles and activity groups.
|
From page 96... ...
High welfare costs reflect conditions in the regional and national economies, deficient educational opportunities afforded children years before in other states, and various discriminatory practices with complex social histories for which no city government can rationally be held liable. Clearly, it is not reasonable to suppose that any city agency might "solve" the problems of unemployment or underemployment; that it might, through local intervention, "resolve" the problems of poverty; that it might significantly affect income distribution; that it might get at the causes of drug addiction; that it might do anything curative about crime or, indeed, about any of a long list of social and economic difficulties that are made evident in city settings.
|
From page 97... ...
For example, several congressional acts in the mid-nineteenth century triggered a revolution in agricultural productivity and opened the West to development, thus influencing urban growth. Similarly, encouragement of foreign immigration led to rapidly growing urban populations at points where expanding factories found ready access to raw materials and transport.
|
From page 98... ...
Only urban-renewal efforts to rebuild the old city centers and the earlier public housing programs aimed at making the cities habitable for the poor might appear to be incompatible with the main thrust. Other aspects of the urban-growth policy, as perceived by an outsider, might include emptying the central regions of the nation, industrializing the Old South, intensively developing the Far West, and constructing several new major metropolitan concentrations along the crescent extending from Florida through Arizona and up the West Coast.
|
From page 99... ...
The second derives from the possibility that the cumulative individual choices that result in urban development may have a wholly undesirable collective outcome or that a desired collective outcome may be attainable only through collective action. Especially in a society of increasing scale, where events in one place may intimately affect persons in distant places and where repercussions can be huge and rapidly diffused, foreseeing the overall social effects of decisions made by large public and private institutions may be of overriding importance.
|
From page 100... ...
This knowledge is needed to provide the basis for policy that is systemic, being simultaneously oriented to whole systems and their parts, to collective ends and to private ones, and to the evolutionary processes by which urban settlements emerge over time. Within this perspective, the common problems of metropolitan communities constitute an important set of issues for the national urban society.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.